'93 NY bombing taught lessons on extremist threat

ASSOCIATED PRESS

February 24, 2013 12:01 AM

FILE - In this file photo of Feb. 26, 1993, a New York City police officer leads a woman to safety following a bomb blast at the World Trade Center. Twenty years ago next week, a group of terrorists blew up explosives in an underground parking garage under one of the towers, killing six people and ushering in an era of terrorism on American soil. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)AP

ASSOCIATED PRESS

February 24, 2013 12:01 AM

NEW YORK -- It had to be an accident.

Though hard to imagine now, that was the prevailing theory moments after an explosion rocked the World Trade Center at about noon on a chilly Feb. 26, 1993.

The truth -- that a cell of Islamic extremists had engineered a car-bomb attack that killed six people, injured more than 1,000 and caused more than a half-billion dollars in damage -- "was incomprehensible at the time," recalled FBI agent John Anticev.

Days before the 20-year anniversary of the bombing, Anticev and other current and former law enforcement officials involved in the case reflected on an event that taught them tough lessons about a dire threat from jihadists. That threat, now seared into the city's psyche because of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, felt vague and remote two decades ago.

"In those days, terrorism wasn't the first reaction," former federal prosecutor David Kelley said.

The scale of the attack was the first dramatic demonstration that "terrorism is theater and New York is the biggest stage," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

A two-time commissioner, Kelly was serving his first stint when the initial report came in to police that day that there was an apparent transformer explosion at the trade center. He raced to the scene, where the bomb planted in a parked Ryder van had left a crater half the size of a football field in the trade center garage.

A day later, after a utility mishap was ruled out, authorities "started to come to the conclusion it was bomb," he said.

The probe took a dramatic turn after investigators found a vehicle identification number on a piece of the blown-up van.

Investigators later learned that the renter of the van wanted to get his deposit back after reporting it stolen -- a break that sounded too good to be true.

The renter, Mohammed Salameh, indeed appeared to demand his deposit about a week after the blast.

The probe of the attack led to convictions of Salameh and three other men and later the capture of Ramzi Yousef, leader of the attack. Investigators learned that Yousef had tried to detonate the bomb in a way that would cause countless casualties by toppling one of the towers into the other and bringing them down like dominoes, and he watched with disappointment from the banks of the Hudson River in New Jersey when it didn't happen.

Even after Yousef, nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was found guilty and put away for life, "we really didn't know what was ahead," said Kelley, who was part of the prosecution team. "This was before everybody was on to (Osama) bin Laden."

Police Commissioner Kelly remembered that in 1993, while surveying the destruction in the underground garage, an engineer told him that the buildings would never come down.